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Full Idea
General principles enter into our thoughts, serving as their inner core and their mortar. Even if we give no thought to them, they are necessary for thought, as muscles and tendons are for walking.
Gist of Idea
General principles, even if unconscious, are indispensable for thinking
Source
Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 1.01.20)
Book Ref
Leibniz,Gottfried: 'New Essays on Human Understanding', ed/tr. Remnant/Bennett [CUP 1996], p.84
A Reaction
Famously, Leibniz identified sufficient reason and non-contradiction as the two foundational principles. Modern logicians seem less keen on this idea, but then they have less interest in how we actually think.
| 19360 | General principles, even if unconscious, are indispensable for thinking [Leibniz] |
| 19404 | Necessities rest on contradiction, and contingencies on sufficient reason [Leibniz] |
| 7807 | The laws of thought are true, but they are not the axioms of logic [Bolzano, by George/Van Evra] |
| 6933 | The laws of reality are also the laws of thought [Feuerbach] |
| 8939 | We should not describe human laws of thought, but how to correctly track truth [Frege, by Fisher] |
| 5396 | Three Laws of Thought: identity, contradiction, and excluded middle [Russell] |
| 5405 | The law of contradiction is not a 'law of thought', but a belief about things [Russell] |
| 9131 | Two long understandable sentences can have an unintelligible conjunction [Sorensen] |
| 6560 | The law of noncontradiction is traditionally the most basic principle of rationality [Fogelin] |